The St. Mihiel Offensive: 12 to 16 September 1918

By Maarten Otte

An account of the American Expeditionary Force’s attack and “an excellent guide to trace the locations of one of the last great battles of the Great War” (On the Old Barbed Wire).

The St. Mihiel Offensive, which took place between the 12th and 16th September 1918, was the first full-scale attack that was under the direct command of the Americans, in the person of General J. Pershing. He combined his command of the First (at the time the only) American Army with that of Commander in Chief of the AEF, a tremendous burden.

The American attack (with the assistance of a French Corps) was an outstanding success and the Germans were forced into a rapid withdrawal to the Michel Line, a strongly defended position that formed the Hindenburg Line in this area. On the other hand, the success was in part assisted by the fact that the Germans intended to withdraw from the exposed position of the Salient back to this line, the only question being the timing of such a move. Historians argue about whether the move had actually begun or not; but the reality is that senior German officers knew that it was imminent and certainly some heavier artillery had already been pulled back.

It is probable that relatively easy success here led to overconfidence among some that the next offensive, the Meuse-Argonne—to the north and scheduled to begin on the 26th, would have a similar outcome. If so they were in for a rude awakening.

This book is profusely illustrated with contemporary photographs and numerous maps, the narrative supplemented by a number of firsthand accounts; the whole is supported by several walking and car tours.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Jan 10, 2020
• ISBN: 9781526734969

Maarten Otte

Maarten Otte is a long time resident of the Argonne. Growing up in the Netherlands with a fascination with the Great War, particularly the role of the United States. He has published books on Nantillois in 1918 and on US Medal of Honor winners.

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Memorials

CHAPTER 1

Setting the Scene: St. Mihiel 1914-1918

1914

On 2 August 1914, the Germans invaded France and Luxembourg and declared war on Russia. Two days later, the German army crossed the Belgian border. The attack on Belgium was immediately followed by the British declaration of war on Germany. The Germans needed to strike at the heart of France to end the problem of fighting a war on two fronts. They were counting on the fact that once Paris was in German hands the French would surrender, after which the German army could turn its attention to Russia. Despite a series of unanticipated setbacks in Belgium, within weeks the Germans had made adequate progress in France and were threatening Paris. Between 25 August and 5 September, the French army had been pushed back on a wide front from the Franco-German border, in the area of this book as far back as the city of Verdun. However, this so-called great retreat ended when the French managed to stem the tide and outflanked the German Armies threatening Paris, which had made important errors in their axis of advance. As a consequence of what proved to be the most significant fighting of the opening stages of the war, during the Battle of the Marne (5 to 12 September) the Germans were forced to fall back to positions between sixty-five and ninety kilometres north of the capital. The opportunity of pushing France out of the war by means of a massive early strike was gone. Soon after what became known as the ‘Miracle of the Marne’ the war of movement came to an end along the River Aisne and the belligerent armies started to dig in. In the Meuse-Argonne region, the French army had managed to hold on to the northern defences around Verdun.

Creation of the Salient 12-15 September 1914

The St. Mihiel Salient had been developed almost by accident in the opening months of the war; it was the by-product of an attempt to outflank Verdun from the south. The two German wings on the Woëvre Plain were held in check by French troops in Toul in the south and Verdun in the north, but in the centre they encountered virtually no resistance; they managed to push on to St. Mihiel, situated on the right bank of the Meuse River, before the attack lost its momentum and ended in stalemate. Both sides started to dig in and fortified their positions. During the course of the war the front line changed little in this area; for four years, St. Mihiel formed a salient in the French lines.

Germans leaving for France, August 1914.

French prisoners at St. Mihiel, October 1914.

Located on one of the historic invasion routes into France, the Salient had strategic significance for both parties. The French saw it as a German springboard for future operations, a threat to Verdun and an obstacle to any French drive into Lorraine or east of the River Meuse. It also cut several important French railway lines.

From the German point of view, it created a buffer zone in front of the Briey-Longwy iron basin and coalfields, and the city of Metz. If enemy forces penetrated beyond Metz they could potentially roll up the whole of the German front from the Swiss border to Belgium; whilst it made sure that several French divisions and large quantities of materiél were tied up in the area so that these could not be deployed elsewhere.

Around the same time as the fighting at St. Mihiel ended, the Germans were pushed back along both flanks of the Argonne Forest due to the pressure being exerted by French troops. On 15 September, the retreat in the area came to a standstill on a line running from north of Vienne-le-Château, Varennes, Cote (Hill) 304, Mort Homme, Vacherauville, Les Éparges to St. Mihiel. Heavy fighting in the Argonne Forest and the hills of Les Éparges on the north western lip of the Salient started as both armies attempted to occupy the high ground. The armies quickly adapted to the new static conditions. The war was not only fought in primitive trenches running across the wooded hills and through valleys and ravines, but also underground. Both sides started to dig an extensive maze of tunnels under enemy strongholds in order to place explosive charges; as a result whole sections of trench line and redoubts were blown up. Many mine craters are still visible today, most notably in Vauquois in the Argonne and Les Éparges, about twenty kilometres north of St. Mihiel. Just four months after the outbreak of the war, the war of movement had changed into a stalemate; the idea of a war of movement with a quick and decisive victory had proved a delusion; the misguided hope of many of being home by Christmas was in tatters.

1915

In 1915 the area between Verdun and St. Mihiel was largely dominated by continuous and savage fighting in Prêtre Wood (across the river from Pont à Mousson) on the eastern side of the Salient, and on Éparges Ridge, on its western side. The main goal of the French was to remove the Germans from the heights of Éparges Ridge, which dominated the Woëvre Plain below (17 February to 5 April), where both sides had been reinforcing their lines after the fighting had briefly ceased in December 1914. The battle on the rugged and forested hills was fierce and the weather conditions appalling, but both armies quickly adapted to the rain, snow, mud and brutal violence. On both sides a huge amount of energy was spent on tunnelling and mine warfare. For the soldiers protecting their stretch of front line, no other option remained but to go underground. In total, seventy-eight mines were blown, gradually turning the hilltops into huge holes; there are craters that can easily hold a London bus. Without doubt, the most poignant example of underground mine warfare in this area is to be found on Éparges Ridge. An estimated 80,000 soldiers, both French and German, perished on the St. Mihiel front. After April 1915 the sector became a relatively quiet area. Today, the craters are still visible in the landscape and one wonders how anybody could have survived at all in this man-made hell.

The front line, 1916–1918.

Over the course of 1915, armies were expanded, factories were built for the production of the enormous quantities of ammunition, guns, rifles and other weaponry that the armies need on a daily basis. Added to this, there was also the need to create an efficient logistical system for food, clothes, wood, corrugated iron, horses and mail. In spite of the shortages of seemingly everything except manpower, massive offensives were launched during 1915, which cost hundreds of thousands of lives: Neuve Chapelle, Second Ypres, Champagne, Artois, Loos, Gallipoli (Turkey), Isonzo (Italy) and Mesopotamia to name but a few.

1916

This year in the Salient was largely used by both the German and French armies to consolidate their lines; new shelters, improved trenches and developing the infrastructure (ie narrow gauge railways and roads) were the main concern of the soldiers manning the Salient.

Starting on 21 February 1916, the French and the Germans engaged in a massive offensive, now known as the Battle of Verdun, which took place just forty kilometres north of St. Mihiel. By this stage the Salient had become of value as what was in effect a rest area. Whilst the fighting at Verdun continued to rage, at the beginning of July 1916 the British and French in turn launched a massive offensive, on the German line straddling the Somme. However, in the Salient, both the French and Germans largely respected the unofficial ceasefire that only ended with the American-French St. Mihiel Offensive of September 1918.

New doctrine

By the autumn of 1916, in the light of the appalling costs of the fighting on the Somme and at Verdun, the German High Command realized that the country could no longer sustain costly campaigns fighting on two fronts.

The war on the Western Front had gradually changed from the strategy more or less adopted by both sides in August 1914 of a series of battles of annihilation – the destruction of the enemy’s ability to fight – and manoeuvre into a war of stalemate, with much more attention paid to possibilities on the Eastern Front. There was strategic purpose in the German offensive at Verdun (even if it was somewhat obscure), the most significant offensive action taken on the Western Front by them since the early months of the war. Whatever its strategic intent, it rapidly degenerated into an extraordinarily bloody slogging match fought in ghastly, unspeakable conditions. The failure of the Allies to secure a decisive success at the opening of the Somme in July reduced that offensive to an even bloodier battle; fighting on the Western Front had been reduced to a war of attrition. At the same time the mobilisation of industry and technological innovation provided ever more lethal weapon systems made available in staggering numbers. Chief amongst these was the huge increase in artillery pieces, firing shells of greater calibre, with improved fuses and with the capability of firing gas.

The mine craters at Les Éparges from the air, 1915.

French soldiers at their ablutions, one enjoying a shave, 1915.

Erich von Falkenhayn (1861-1922), chief of the German General Staff from September 1914, adopted a doctrine of holding the line at all costs once the fighting had ended that year in the stalemate of entrenched positions. If a position was lost, local commanders were to launch counter attacks to recapture it. By the autumn of 1916 it was clear that this inflexibility was costing unacceptable casualties. Falkenhayn was sacked in late August – the final straw in his downfall being the entry of Romania into the war on the Allied side.

In a war of attrition there was an inescapable fact: the Allies had greater manpower resources than the Germans and there was a real risk that the German army would be bled white first. The duumvirate of Hindenburg (1847-1934) and Ludendorff (185-1937), who succeeded him as professional heads of the German army, sought a new doctrine to enable ground to be held in a way that minimised German casualties whilst at the same time inflicting disproportionate casualties on the Allied forces. The Cambrai Conference of 8 September 1916 was instrumental in working out a new doctrine.

In anticipation of a future Allied offensive, Ludendorff directed military engineers to study the possibility of building two major withdrawal positions behind the front lines of the Western Front. These defence lines became known to the Allies as the Hindenburg Line. Not long afterwards work started on the construction of the new system on the Somme and in Flanders; Once it was completed, in the early spring of 1917, the Germans withdrew in the Somme and Arras sector, shortening the German front line by some fifty kilometres and releasing anything up to a dozen divisions from holding the line and making them available for deployment elsewhere.

1917 and 1918

Still a quiet part of the front line, at the base of the Salient the situation changed rapidly when in July 1917 the Germans started working on the Michel Zone. Thousands of workers were drafted into the area; a building frenzy started at the base of the St. Mihiel Salient. Away from prying enemy eyes and largely out of range of the French guns, the Germans started a building project unprecedented on the Western Front: over a thousand pillboxes were to be constructed on a sixty kilometre wide front, stretching from Étain in the north (twenty kilometres east of Verdun) to Pont-à-Mousson in the south. Ultimately, it shortened the German front line by sixty kilometres and released a little over four divisions, two of the main goals of the building programme. In case of a full-scale enemy attack, the troops were ordered to evacuate the Salient and to retreat to the Michel Zone as fast as possible and only fight rearguard actions to avoid unnecessary casualties and loss of material. Once in the safety of the shelters, the German artillery was to destroy the enemy in front of the defences.

The German defences in the Salient.

The frantic building activities continued right up to the start of the St. Mihiel Offensive of 12 September 1918. However, when the attack started, the building project was far from complete, save for the Volker Line, the most important. Ultimately, the line was never put to the test, but served as an example for future building programs that both the French and Germans employed in the 1930s to fortify their borders. These lines became known as the Maginot Line and the Siegfried Line, which in turn inspired the building of the Atlantic Wall during the Second World War.

CHAPTER 2

August 1918: the Americans Take Over

The St. Mihiel Offensive started on 12 September 1918, and was the first operation undertaken in the First World War by an independent American Army, under the command of its Commander-in-Chief, General Pershing, and was supported by 110,000 French troops. The plan to develop an Army near St. Mihiel when sufficient troops were available and to reduce the Salient there as a preliminary to more extensive operations in the same vicinity (Metz), was proposed by Pershing and was agreed to by the French High Command at a conference shortly after the arrival of the American Army Headquarters in France. The Americans constantly had this plan in mind and, beginning in January 1918, the front near St. Mihiel was used to give front line experience to American divisions and to acquaint them with the region in which they would later attack.

However, the succession of German attacks in the spring of 1918, the so-called Spring Offensive, made it necessary to postpone the original plan, as all available American troops were urgently needed to bolster the French and British Armies who were at the risk of collapse in other sectors of the front, most notably in the Marne region, not far from Paris. Although by July there were already more than 1,200,000 American soldiers in France, American combat formations were widely distributed along the entire front, either serving in line with the French and British Armies or undergoing training in rear areas.

US collar disc, worn on the left collar.

When at the start of August (close to the end of the Second Battle of the Marne of 15 July-6 August 1918) it became clear that the reduction of the German-held Aisne-Marne Salient was nearly completed, General Pershing pointed out to Foch that the improved situation made possible the concentration of American formations and insisted that the creation of an American Army be resumed. Although the French, but more specifically the British, urged that American units be left with their forces, Pershing stuck to his position. After much debate, reluctantly an understanding was reached that most of the American formations would soon be concentrated into an independent American Army in the St. Mihiel area. For the time being, only the American 27th and the 30th Divisions stayed with the British.

On 13 August, at the newly established American First Army Headquarters in Neufchâteau, the Army staff began to set up shop and preparations started for the reduction of the Salient. The assembling of formations started soon thereafter and, on 30 August, the American First Army took over command of the front line from Port-sur-Seille, nine kilometres east of the River Moselle, to Watronville, fourteen kilometres south-east of Verdun, a sector that also included the St. Mihiel Salient.

Second Battle of the Marne. The Americans attacked at Château-Thierry and Belleau Wood, see 1 on the map.

The Salient was shaped roughly like a triangle, with its points near (to the south) Pont-à-Mousson, (west) St. Mihiel and (north) Verdun. At its base, it was forty-five kilometres wide, extended thirty kilometres into the Allied lines and had remained almost unchanged in shape since the end of 1914. Its north-western face ran diagonally across the wooded heights east of the Meuse River, and its south eastern face extended from St. Mihiel to the River Moselle, traversing the Meuse Heights, the Moselle Heights and the intervening Woëvre Plain. This plain is cut by small streams and dotted with woods of varying size. It is comparatively low ground, containing many lakes and swampy areas, thus making cross-country travel difficult, especially in wet weather.

Within the German lines at the southern face of the Salient were the high and isolated hills of Loupmont and Montsec. These afforded the Germans excellent views of a large area of ground behind the French lines. Two German positions, the Wilhelm and the Schroeter Zone, had been prepared in front of the Michel Zone and all had been strengthened by elaborate systems of trenches, barbed-wire entanglements, concrete shelters and machine-gun emplacements. The Michel Zone, however, was the most powerful of the three; since 1917 this zone had been changed into a veritable fortress and close to one thousand pillboxes had been built on a sixty kilometres’ wide front. The Michel Zone was to remain intact and in German hands until the Armistice.

The value of the Salient to the Germans

1. It protected the City of Metz, and the German border;

2. It protected the important Briey iron basin and large coal deposits;

3. It interrupted traffic on the main Paris-Nancy railroad;

4. It cut the Verdun-Toul railroad;

5. It threatened the Allied territory in its vicinity, especially west of the Meuse;

6. It forced the French to keep thousands of troops and large quantities of supplies in the area.

It was clear to Foch that the St. Mihiel Salient would first have to be eliminated before any great offensive could be launched against the Briey and Metz region in the east, or to the north, between the Meuse River and Argonne Forest in the general direction of Sedan.

The final American preparations for the attack against the Salient had been underway for just two weeks when, on 30 August, Marshal Foch unexpectedly suggested to General Pershing that the attack on St. Mihiel should be greatly downsized and that most of the American divisions should be used for another attack to be launched around 20 September between Verdun and the Argonne Forest. In the new plans, the American divisions would be assigned to operate under French command. Knowing that Pershing was almost fixated on deploying the American Army as a whole, Foch pressed Pershing to undertake not one but two offensives. Additionally, it freed French divisions that could now be deployed elsewhere along the front.

General John J. Pershing.

George C. Marshall, Operations Section, HQ.

An extremely annoyed, not to say angry, General Pershing felt that the St. Mihiel Offensive should be carried out as planned and definitely stated that the American divisions would fight only as part of an independent American Army. On 2 September, after a series of conferences with Foch, it was agreed that the assault would be carried out, but that its objectives would be strictly limited so that the American (First) Army could undertake another major attack, the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, ten days after the capture of the planned initial objectives for the St. Mihiel ‘drive’ on 16 September, on the front between the Meuse River and the Argonne Forest. Although quite ambitious, to say the least, but eager to show the French and the British what the Americans were capable of, Pershing agreed.

Naturally, this agreement weighed heavily upon the largely inexperienced American First Army and staff, as not only was it called upon to bring to an end the offensive at St. Mihiel, it was also responsible for planning the transportation of vast quantities of men and supplies to the Meuse-Argonne front, all within a very limited time frame. From the outset there was a huge shortage of non-commissioned and commissioned officers, which was a problem that continued to haunt the Americans right up to the Armistice. George Marshall wrote in his memoirs that

‘… the inexperience of the hundreds of staff officers involved us in many complications. Instructions directing the concealment of all dumps of supplies and ammunitions which were being established in the area were followed up by inspectors, and one of these enthusiasts required the officer at the largest ammunition dump in the area, La Courtine, north of Toul, to cover it with white [tar]paulins, with the result that a short time after the target was thus accentuated a German airplane dropped a bomb which blew up the entire affair.’

To make matters more complicated, Pershing, not only C-in-C of the American Expeditionary Forces, was also determined to retain command of First Army, an extremely ambitious task for just one man, to say the